Edna Purviance's bio

Friday, August 31, 2007

With fall coming on I will be working on a general update of Edna's home site as Edna enters her seventh year on the web in November. Also a new Brief Glimpse planned for September and a one day special event for Edna's birthday in October. But Sea Gull still is the top item at the moment, as we move into the final stages of layout.

Also, this winter, work on the newly found films on Edna will begin, as will the restart of the biography of the Purviance's. So lots more in store.

We like to thank everyone too for helping make Edna's home site have the best summer ever, with record visits for each of the months of June, July and August.

"Chaplin, the American musical that stalled on its way to Broadway, but found award-winning success in a Miami staging, will resurface this fall in a university production in Charlie Chaplin's home turf: England.A staging at the respected Guildford School of Acting, which has a lauded musical theatre program, will be the latest test of the biographical Music Hall-flavored show about the early life of the film comedian." - PlayBill News

"Our retrospective for August 30th is going to be somewhat different but very unique. We'll be talking Buster Keaton featuring LIVE running commentary to the movies playing on TCM on August 30th starting at 8pm EST. Steamboat Bill Jr. is the first movie playing.

This is also our 25th program as well, so it'll be a very special night.If you haven't listened LIVE to the program in awhile,THIS IS THE ONE FOR YOU!!! Call in with your 2 cents. (646)-915-8877."

DCR shows are live, but past shows can be heard as podcast.Link to DCR

Oct. 2007 - BlogTalkRadio has updated their website and changed their links. New DCR link.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Friday, August 24, 2007

"The beleaguered cemetery has more than one potential buyer, but nothing will change until the lawsuits against it are resolved, said Thomas Trimble — the administrator of the estate of Marsha Lee Howard, the cemetery’s former owner."“Nothing is going to happen until the lawsuits pass. Nothing,” he said."

“The city is getting upset because the owners are not taking steps to do anything,” he said. “Well, the owners can’t do anything if they don’t have the financial means to do it.”

“I’m not going to let this kill me like it killed my sister,” Trimble said."- Glendale News______________During the city hall meeting this week, it was revealed Trimble was trying to have someone check the water situation at Grand View. But with no means to make money, it is hard to afford the needed work.

Update Oct. 1, 2007 - You can read more at this link from Glendale News (Up for 14 days starting Aug. 23) Link now only available on Glendale News (pay) Archive pages.

As for Grand View, no public news to report, as things are happening behind the scenes with the many lawsuits in place. The Glendale City site has not updated their Grand View page since late August. Cemetery has remained closed. You can learn more at this GV information site.

The last story on GV ran in the Glendale paper August 31, but not on the web, as usual. It says, the State had ordered the cemetery to be sold in the next three years. It ends the state investigation into the case, but the lawsuits will continue. When this will all be resolved, is anyones guess.

At the Glendale city council meeting Tuesday night, the members voted to "pursue abatement orders against Grand View."

"The growing burden on the city to maintain Grand View Memorial Park while it sits shuttered during a long-running legal battle drew a virtual war cry from the City Council on Tuesday night when it tabled a proposed $400,000 city maintenance plan in favor of moving to invoke public nuisance orders against the property.

Faced with the realization that the maintenance plan might be the beginning of a very expensive endeavor, the City Council unanimously approved a motion directing the City Attorney’s Office to pursue public nuisance abatement orders against the cemetery." - Glendale News

This new legal action holds up the planned maintenances and any opening of the cemetery to the public.

You can read more at this Glendale News link (up for 14 days starting Aug. 22) and at Lisa's blog.

UPDATE - WATCH MEETING ON VIDEO: If you wish to watch the meeting held Tuesday, August 21, 2007, check this link to the video archive of City of Glendale. (In this five hour video, Grand View starts about 2 hours into the video.) It's a long discussion, that boils down to cost (who really pays) and all parties afraid to be sued, if someone gets hurt on the property.

It was said in passing the current lawsuit could last three to five years. Next schedule court case hearing is September 11, 2007.____________________Grand View is the cemetery Edna is located. more>

Note: The Stolen Moments blog had some server issues this last week, so if you checked in and found the page missing, it was only a server problem, and has pretty much been fixed now. Also for Mac users, Donna's show is on iTunes. Just go to iTunes and look-up Stolen Moments.

Of all the council members, Bob Yousefian has been the most out-spoken in wanting to get something done:

"...the city is taking too long with the work.

“I was under the impression that staff was working on this because we allocated the funds,” Councilman Bob Yousefian said. “It’s been a month and nothing has happened. I just drove down there, looked at it, and I was horrified.”“We have almost a million dollars’ worth of department heads out there and they can’t figure out a simple task, which is to go out there and put some water on those trees,” Yousefian said." - Glendale News

When watching the town hall meetings, it is easy to see who is the most interested, but also why the others aren't. It is a complicated problem. It is a private cemetery and not the cities problem, so doing what they think is right.

But this is not a building in a business park, but a historical cemetery that is part of the Glendale community. Little to no action the last year has created the current conditions and it is not going to just 'go away.'

I know on Edna's site we have visitors from around the world watching this develop since I started posting about it in November 2005. Some are quite shocked how a country that is support to be so rich and talks about being a 'can do country', treat their dead so disrespectfully and act like they can't do anything.

The insurance company with the 'afraid someone will get hurt and we get sued' is one problem, it is a private cemetery is another, and the on going lawsuits yet another. But the problem is not just going to disappear and their are people around the world 'watching' what is happening and residence wanting to see something happening.The complete Glendale News story is up for 14 days from August 18th, 2007.

Decided to create a new post for Stolen Moments. Donna Hill plans to have her new show up soon. She notes:

"...I was conducting interviews for the follow up Film Festival podcasts, Skype had an upgrade and it rendered my software to record phone calls useless.

The good news is, I've found a possible alternative recorder which I will be testing out this weekend, once Skype resolves their current issues.It's been a frustrating couple of months for me and I hope that I've not lost my listeners."

Stuff happens, so good to know she is working it out and should have a new podcast soon. We'll be listening...

Friday, August 17, 2007

Update: August 19th - After all the computer issues last week, we finally are able to get back full speed on Sea Gull.

Edna's site is backup! It could still have some problems, but at least backup now.(Note: went down at about 6PM Pacific coast time Thursday evening - backup about 10AM Friday morning. So if you sent something or was trying to visit during that time, you know why you couldn't get on. Thanks for your patience during this period.)

Follow-up: As for our older computer going out Monday, it made the transfer to the new one slow, since we couldn't just 'plug it in and download.' We are working around it and hope to have more items in very soon to complete the transfer. In the meantime I am working on materials for The Sea Gull book, but layout work has slowed down, until we get all of this computer stuff sorted.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

In sorting out orders for the new computer this week, we found out our local long distance phone company was sending out 'this number is disconnected' messages to select callers. We had no idea this was happening, since we don't use the land phone line that much and unless someone says something, how could we have known. The computer company had to call us back to confirm the order, and that is when we discovered it.

When I informed the phone company of the problem, they quickly knew exactly what it was. They said it has to do with something called 'broadcasting.' Since they use our original phone line, they re-direct, or 'broadcast' back to our old line (something like that). I found out it is not foolproof and only a problem with long distance calls, but not something they like to 'go public' about. Our local phone company never informed us such a problem existed in the year and half we have been with them.

Most of the time we are told any such problem is our problem not theirs. This time, they quickly responded, as I explained the problem to them. I just have to trust they are being truthful and have fixed the problem, since it can happened at any moment on long distance calls. In my case, it took four calls back for the line to finally work.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Well, we were going along great with The Sea Gull until a 'tide wave' hit us. The computer that the book is being created on stopped working today. It has been a very loyal 'work horse' for several years, but probably will have to go 'to pasture.'

At least we can still do our business work, but The Sea Gull will be held up until we get a new computer in place and/or re-shuffled to one of our other computers. (We didn't lose anything.)

Some of the work will continued, but it does slow the project down. Rats, but that's the way the 'wave' bounces...

August 15th: Old computer is going out, and new one to arrive soon. Should be back to top speed very soon.

Thanks again for all the interest in the project. I know I haven't said a whole lot about it yet, but that will change as we roll long here.

We got a lot of work done on The Sea Gull this last week and weekend. With a little break in our normal work (being the time of year when many people take vacations) we are using the time to get the book ready for printing.

Like to thank our last panel readers for their help and comments too. Right now, I feel we are finally seeing the first sign of light in the train tunnel and moving pretty good. Still loads to do, so need to keep it rolling now. More to come...

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Just outside of London, in the town Berkhamsted, is the National Film & Television Archives. It houses BFI's huge library of film and rare archives that can't be found anywhere else.

BFI has had funding problems for years, but now is in a funding crisis.

"The current annual budget for the BFI archive is £3.5 million. (The British Library’s is more than £100m.) The BFI is now seeking an annual budget of £6m, with an additional one-off grant from government of £34m to bring the storage conditions up to scratch and begin digitisation.

Digitisation is not, however, a holy grail – there’s no guarantee that the format will prove any more durable than celluloid – nor is it cheap. An average feature costs around £8,000 to transfer; a Technicolor film requiring restoration work might come in at 20 times that.

‘If you were just digitising things to look at them on YouTube, you could find a way to do it cheaply,’ says Kalas. ‘But if you want to make sure that in 100 years people can see “The Red Shoes” on the big screen, it’s important to do it right." - TimeOut

When we last visited London, I requested to see the Edna Purviance Collection. These were personal items that once beyond to Edna, and somehow were lost overtime. Except for some photos that were pulled out and placed in the BFI Chaplin files, the remaining items of Edna's were housed at Berkhamstead. More about the British Film Institute problems >

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

We are currently working on the full layout of the book. Great to finally be at this stage. More news to come... Thank-you for your continued interest in the project.In the meantime, I see Midnight Palace is currently showing a 'jazz music' version of 'Sunnyside.' more>

Monday, August 06, 2007

I brought a photo a few years ago of Douglas Fairbanks. It has a printed signature on it that reads: Doughlas Fairbanks. Just wondering if any other fans may have seen a photo signed like that with the added 'h'. Thanks...

Saturday, August 04, 2007

"The craze for colourisation of black and white classic films is on the rise in India."

India is on this 'craze' to take old black and white films and make them into color films. Black and white films should stay as the original creator made them, not what a new generation thinks it should be for some latest style thing. Some of you should remember Ted Turner wanting to do the same thing back in the 80s, but thought better of it.

You can read more about one of the companies planning it. They say it gives movie fans a new experience. Well, you could paint the Washington Monument a hot pink, but that wouldn't make it right. They mention Chaplin's films as a candidate for it, which would be sad to think of. Link to article: more>

"...There are many classics for example Charlie Chaplin - whose film reels are in bad condition and needs restoration," he said." - Goldstone

Hard to believe it is August already. Might be because we have been busy working on The Sea Gull in July. At this point we are awaiting another special panel reading on the main text, while we continue to work on the photo section for the book.

As for the Chaplin Library, I have not done any new work on it in July, but Dominique has sent some 'new' Chaplin books to be added. I will add these to the Latest page in the coming weeks. The Library is being re-created into a whole new system, but Sea Gull is taking much of the time right now.

Continuing to work on the cataloging of Edna's collection, which takes a great deal of time, as well, which includes research of many items.

Still planning another special Brief Glimpse for Sea Gull. Could be a one day event, so stay tune for that one.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Lots of interest in Oona Chaplin lately, so here is a bit from the file about Oona becoming "Debutante No. 1," before she became Mrs. Chaplin._____________________

Debutante No. 1 - April 12, 1942 - New York"A 16-year-old girl who says she is not 'lace-curtain Irish' but definitely the other kind was voted "Debutante No. 1" of the 1942 season today. The very cute "Shanty Irisher" is Oona O'Neill, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, famed playwright.

"My first name is not a typographical error," she said. "It's an old Irish name and James Stephens, the Irish writer, suggested it to father. Of course, I'm not lace-curtain. I'm Shanty Irish and proud of it. How do I feel about being a glamor girl? - I'm pretty darn excited."

The setting was in of all places, a bistro named the Stork Club where cafe society dropped in ballots for their choice of the "sub-debutante"... who combines... beauty, leader-shop, intelligence and popularity."

Oona has jet-black hair, stands 5 feet/4 inches in high heels, weighs 125 pounds, doesn't smoke or drink, dates only on week-ends and was accompanied by three young men of pre-Class 1-A age.

"Oh, they're nobody," she said, admitting she had never been in love.

Her father is convalescing in Danville, California, and she's a bit timid about letting him hear the latest news. She's read everything he ever wrote but she's written only one thing, a poem entitled "Springs," which a magazine returned to her with a rejection slip in 48 hours.

She took her college entrance exams yesterday: if she makes the grade she wants to go to Vassar. Meantime she'll pursue her latest hobby - painting."____________________

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

With the reports of the dying trees at Grand View Cemetery, I decided to go back to my GV photos and place together one of my pan shots from the cemetery.

This was taken in mid-May of 2006, just shortly before the water was shut off for good. I do remember a man on the property watering that day. It didn't look as good as it could have, but one of the last times it looked its best. Click this LINK for enlarged image.

It would be interesting, when the cemetery opens again, if someone could send us this exact same view to see the changes.

August 1, 2007 - Grand View Cemetery Reopening DelayBecause of the dry conditions, the reopening of Grand View has been pushed back until sometime in September. (Glendale News article up for the next 14 days) More>

From the Research FileIt was the summer of 1930. Paulette Goddard James was living in Reno when a phone call came to leave for Hollywood._____________________

July 8, 1930 - Reno, Nevada"Paulette Goddard James, Ziegfeld beauty, has been in Reno for a little more than two months planning on a divorce from Peter James, a former broker, but she will not go through with the divorce at this time, for she has had to go to Hollywood to comply with terms of a contract for four pictures.

The former Paulette Goddard lacked only three weeks of completing her three-month resident in Reno when the call came to go to Hollywood to take part in a new picture. She does not know whether she will have an opportunity to complete her Nevada residence, or will have to give it up and begin all over again after she is through making pictures."________________

Interestingly, Paulette would later play in a picture called 'The Women' where she plays a woman getting a divorce in Nevada. As for her real divorce, seeing when it did actually occur.

Latest updates on Edna Purviance's sites, related Charlie Chaplin news and items of interest, with a sampling of my other interests. Currently working on Edna's family bio. Draft is finished, and onto the editor stage. More to come.

Charlie Chaplin DVDs

Comparison Review of the Mutual DVD Collections

Charlie Chaplin Books

Collecting Chaplin books? Check out our list and database

Hollywood Series

Kevin Brownlow and David Gill - While still available on VHS from private collections, The Hollywood Series Collection SHOULD BE on DVD, but due to copyrights, controlled by studios, etc. it is being held-up. Great series that should be saved.

Adel Gance's Napoléon and Revisiting England

Morgan vs. Morgan

Finding the alias 'Morgan Hill'

The Sea Gull "A Woman of the Sea" by Linda Wada - Charlie Chaplin's lost film production - 1926

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR DETAILS! Film starring Edna Purviance, story and direction by Josef von Sternberg: "The look of the film, revealed in these marvellous photographs, makes it all the more tragic that it was destroyed." - Kevin Brownlow, Silent Film Historian, London

Adventure Films - 2014 WAR Series

with Garen & Murray Ewing discuss 10 war films for this latest series.

Lita Hill: Apr. 1933-Jan. 2008

Edna Purviance's Grand Niece has died - see January 21, 2008 post. About Lita's interview shown in Hollywood: "...remarkable interviews with Edna's great niece, herself quite the interesting lady. A nontraditional view of Edna, who did NOT pine away and die after her affair with Chaplin ended, but went out and lived a good full life and married the man of her dreams. I hope this one gets some walking money."

Discovered Films with Edna!

Edna Purviance's Private Life! See January 17th, 2007 special post!

Jack Squire's films part of FDR Documentary

PBS Producer, John Schwally, will be using some of Jack Squire's discovered films for upcoming documentary about FDR. (Jack was Edna's husband.)